"I'm very, very contrary. And I want to be in control, which is what informs my attitude to publishing, editing, being interviewed. I set high standards too: as a reader, I don't read any poor novels, so I'm always aware of how much my own work falls flat by comparison. And perhaps it's because I grew up in South Africa, and it was easy there for people like me to grow up with a consciousness of inferiority."

"I have a ghost existence here: my whole intellectual and emotional life is in South Africa."

"I was hot-headed, impatient, I just wanted to leave the whole oppressiveness of my own culture far behind."

"On the other hand, when I was at school, I remember kids in my class boasting about the members of their family who had 'turned white'."

"The newspapers were always full of stories about abandoned children found tied up or living under the bed because their families were ashamed of them on account of the colour of their skin."

"Words are such thin shavings of the fractal fruit, tiny scraping of the skin that holds these joyously determined swirls of history inside their juicy turbulence. Talking itself westward after the day's feast, each little word with its meaning strapped to its back falls down the swell of tomorrow like a hiker with hopeful new shoes."